Category: Uncategorized

Posted on

Bitcoin powers to new high as Tesla takes it mainstream

TOKYO (Reuters) – Bitcoin extended gains on Tuesday to a record high as the afterglow of Tesla Inc’s investment in the cryptocurrency had investors reckoning it would become a mainstream asset class for both corporates and money managers. Bitcoin has more than doubled over two months as institutional investors search for alternative wealth stores and retail traders ride the wave. Monday’s leap after Tesla’s announcement was its largest daily rise in more than three years. It climbed to a new peak of $48,216 late in the Asian afternoon on Tuesday. Rival cryptocurrency ethereum had struck a record high of $1,784.85 in the early morning. Shares of companies that provide trading platforms for bitcoin and the technology to “mine” the cryptocurrency surged in China, South Korea, and Australia, and big computer chip making companies such as SK Hynix also rose. The U.S. dollar slumped against most currencies. Analysts figuredTesla’s announcement that it had bought $1.5 billion in bitcoin and that it would take the cryptocurrency as payment for cars is part of a larger shift as companies and big investment houses follow small traders into the asset. “While you can now buy a Tesla with bitcoin, I wouldn’t suggest doing so,” said Michael Bucella, partner at crypto investment firm BlockTower on CNBC. “We’re in a position where these are the earliest phases of an allocation to bitcoin from the institutional and corporate community.” Bitcoin is already up 62% this year, on top of a 300% rally last year, as investors search for alternatives to the greenback because of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s 0% interest rates. Central bankers and regulators, particularly in China, are also starting to embrace issuing their own digital currencies for everyday use, in a major break from the conventional workings of global finance. “Digital currencies, it seems clear to us, are going to be an increasing part of financial architecture very broadly and potentially portfolios moving forward,” Ben Powell, APAC chief investment strategist at BlackRock’s Investment Institute, said on CNBC. “There isn’t just news in the U.S. with the bitcoin situation, but in China we’ve got a rollout of China’s digital currency with so-called ‘red packets’.”

Tesla boss Elon Musk has long been a cryptocurrency fan – he has talked them up online – but Tesla’s hard currency investment came as a surprise that has put a rocket under the sector.

Even dogecoin, a joke cryptocurrency with a dog as its symbol, has seen its value turbocharged after Musk mentioned it on Twitter. It has jumped by 13% in the past day, according to CoinMarketCap. China’s Feitian Technologies Co Ltd, which makes technology for digital payments, rose 4.47% on Tuesday. Beijing will issue 10 million yuan ($1.55 million) worth of digital currency to residents that can be used during the Lunar New Year holiday starting on Thursday, domestic media reported. In addition, Chinese are expected to send billions of yuan to each other during the weeklong holiday via chat apps such as WeChat – digital versions of traditional ‘red packet’ envelopes filled with cash. Nick Note: Proof i am too stupid to embrace Bitcoin. Never thought i would see $40,000. Remember i bought mine at 300 a coin and have been dumping out ever since….. Constantly at the low. I do not understand this particular mania. I understand bubbles its in my soul to short them. Normally I know how to ride them up and then reverse and short them down.. NOT BIT COIN! I cannot wrap my head around this monster. It screams at me fraud. I have mined bitcoin (unsuccessfully) I have experimented with wallets. I even lost 100 coins when one of my phones was lost. But more then made it up. But i put up my hands and say don’t shoot…. I constantly get it wrong on bitcoin and that is why we have never traded it on leverage. Shit even my bitcoin stock recoes are doing well…… Two years later. I cannot escape the fact that every fiber of my being screams tulip  bulb mania…… We shall see what we see

Posted on

Does the world need new COVID vaccines? ‘Jury is out’, Oxford’s Pollard says

LONDON (Reuters) – It is not yet clear whether the world needs a new set of vaccines to fight different variants of the novel coronavirus but scientists are working on new ones so there is no reason for alarm, the head of the Oxford Vaccine Group said on Tuesday. South Africa has paused a planned rollout of AstraZeneca’s vaccines after data showed it gave minimal protection against mild infection among young people from the dominant variant there, stoking fears of a much longer battle with the pathogen.

AstraZeneca and Oxford University aim to produce a next generation of vaccines that will protect against variants as soon as the autumn before the Northern Hemisphere winter, AstraZeneca’s research chief said this month.

“There are definitely new questions about variants that we’re going to be addressing. And one of those is: do we need new vaccines?,” Andrew Pollard, Chief Investigator on the Oxford vaccine trial, told BBC radio. “I think the jury is out on that at the moment, but all developers are preparing new vaccines so if we do need them, we’ll have them available to be able to protect people.” Vaccines are seen as the swiftest path out of the COVID-19 crisis which has killed 2.33 million people and turned normal life upside down for billions. Researchers from the University of Witwatersrand and the University of Oxford said in a prior-to-peer analysis that the AstraZeneca vaccine provided minimal protection against mild or moderate infection from the South African variant among young people. Protection against moderate-severe disease, hospitalisation or death could not be assessed in the study of around 2,000 volunteers who had a median age of 31 as the target population were at such low risk, the researchers said. “I think there’s clearly a risk of confidence in the way that people may perceive you. But as I say I don’t think that there is any reason for alarm today,” Pollard said. “The really important question is about severe disease and we didn’t study that in South Africa, because that wasn’t the point of that study, we were specifically asking questions about young adults.”

The so called South African variant, known by scientists as 20I/501Y.V2 or B.1.351, is the dominant one in South Africa and is circulating in 41 countries around the world including the United States.

Other major variants include the so-called UK variant, or 20I/501Y.V1, and the Brazilian variant known as P.1. An analysis of infections by the South African variant showed there was only a 22% lower risk of developing mild-to-moderate COVID-19 if vaccinated with the AstraZeneca shot versus those given a placebo. If vaccines do not work as effectively as hoped against new and emerging variants, the world could be facing a much longer – and more expensive – battle against the virus than previously thought. “As long as we have enough immunity to prevent severe disease, hospitalisations and death then we’re going to be fine in the future in the pandemic,” Pollard said. Pollard said the South African government was right to look at how it deployed the AstraZeneca vaccine because the original plan was to use it in young adults – particularly healthcare workers – who were not expected to get severe disease. “It needs a relook at how best to deploy the vaccine,” Pollard said. Nick Note: As we have warned all along it will take a booster shot every 6 months to a year to tame this beast. This is a RNA virus like the flue. And that meanse it is constantly mutating. And like the yearly flu vaccine the booster shot is a shot in the dark (excuse the pun) Which means we can not let our guard down. See how they are spoon feeding the masses the bad news slowly

Posted on

US markets end on record highs as investors eye stimulus

Wall Street’s main indexes hit record highs today. US investors have made risky bets on hopes that a fiscal relief package would lead to a speedy economic recovery. Investors were keeping an eye on bitcoin as it rose again, with Elon Musk promising Tesla would soon take payment for its electric vehicles in the currency and revealing it had already bought $1.5 billion worth of it. Benchmark US Treasury yields surged to 11-month highs as the US fiscal stimulus was seen boosting economic growth and raising inflation more quickly than expected, and before the Treasury Department sells new longer-dated debt. The Reddit rally looks to be coming to a long-awaited end with Gamestop trading down nearly seven per cent to $59.11 while fellow meme stock AMC Entertainment plunged 11.2 per cent to $6.05 per share. Meanwhile, London markets started the week on the right foot, bringing the FTSE three-session losing streak to an end. The FTSE 100 by the close was up 0.7 per cent to 6,533. Investor sentiment has turned positiuve of a global economic recovery from the pandemic and renewed optimism over US stimulus plans. The FTSE 250 was up 0.1 per cent to 21,087, gaining for a sixth straight day. “The UK commodities are higher, which is tied into the hopes that a $1.9 trillion US stimulus package is going to passed without the help of Republicans. I think that is the underlying market driver,” said Connor Campbell, analyst at Spreadex. Elsewhere, Asian stock markets rose, buoyed by the growing pace of vaccine rollouts and falling rates of coronavirus infection. The Asian mood was upbeat as all major indexes clocked gains as shares hovered near record highs

Posted on

Factbox: What we know about the South African variant of COVID-19

Feb 8 (Reuters) – South Africa halted the planned rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University after data showed it gave minimal protection against mild infection from one variant of the virus found in the country.

* The variant was identified in December and is now the dominant variant in South Africa, responsible for 80%-90% of COVID-19 new cases.

* Scientists say it is different from other variants circulating in South Africa because it has multiple mutations in the important “spike” protein that the virus uses to infect human cells.

* The 501Y.V2 variant, part of the B.1.351 lineage, is about 53% more transmissible than earlier variants of the virus, research shows.

* South African scientists say there is no clear evidence that it is associated with more severe disease or worse outcomes. However, it does appear to spread faster than previous iterations.

* As of Jan. 27, it had been identified in 41 countries, according to the World Health Organization. Australia, China France, Japan and Switzerland are among the countries that have found cases.

* Drugmakers including Pfizer/BioNTech , Moderna, AstraZeneca are testing whether their vaccines protect against the variant.

Here is what the trials found:

ASTRAZENECA-OXFORD UNIVERSITY:

In an analysis, which has not been peer reviewed, the shot developed by the British partners provides minimal protection against mild-moderate COVID-19 infection from the B.1.351 coronavirus variant first identified in South Africa. (https://bit.ly/3aPLpSp)

The study was based on 2,026 volunteers who were on average 31 years old – half were given a placebo. Mild disease was defined as at least one symptom of COVID-19. Prior to widespread circulation of the more contagious variant, the vaccine was showing efficacy of around 75%, researchers said. In a later analysis based mostly on infections by the new variant, there was only a 22% lower risk of developing mild-to-moderate COVID-19 versus those given a placebo. Although researchers said the figure was not statistically significant, due to trial design, it is well below the benchmark of at least 50% regulators have set for vaccines to be considered effective against the virus. The study did not assess whether the vaccine helped prevent severe COVID-19 because it involved mostly relatively young adults not considered to be at high risk for serious illness. AstraZeneca said it believed its vaccine could protect against severe disease given that the neutralising antibody activity was equivalent to that of other COVID-19 vaccines that have demonstrated protection against severe disease. The British partners aim to produce a next generation of COVID-19 vaccines that will protect against variants as soon as the autumn.

REACTIONS SO FAR:

* Some scientists say it may be better to roll out the AstraZeneca shot in South Africa to provide some protection rather than waiting for the delivery of other shots.

Andrew Pollard, chief investigator on the Oxford vaccine trial, said the data confirms that the coronavirus will find ways to spread, but shots could help ease the toll on health care systems if they prevent severe disease.

* While it was only a small sample size and in low-risk volunteers, the data highlights the need to determine if the shot is effective in prevent more severe illness, the WHO said on Monday.

Additional studies are needed to confirm the optimal vaccination schedule, it said.

“What these results tell us is that we need to do everything we can to reduce circulation of the virus and delay mutations that may reduce the efficacy of existing vaccines,” it said.

“It also seems increasingly clear that manufacturers will have to adjust to the COVID-19 viral evolution, taking into account the latest variants for future booster shots.”

Emma Hodcroft, a researcher at the University of Bern: “If the vaccine is less effective, there would be a concern that any partial protection it may offer could allow mutations that confer an advantage by evading that immunity to rise to prominence, perhaps leading to variants that are completely escaped from vaccine-immunity.”

PFIZER-BIONTECH:

Preliminary data, which have yet to be peer reviewed and involve a small number of patients, show the vaccine may be less able to protect against infection with the South African variant of the virus.

NOVAVAX AND J&J:

Clinical trial data on COVID-19 vaccines developed by Novavax and Johnson & Johnson have found the South African coronavirus reduced their ability to protect against the disease.

Posted on

Reddit really did run a Super Bowl ad — and it referenced when its users disrupted Wall Street

FIVE SECONDS OF GLORY:

No, it wasn’t a glitch — for some Super Bowl viewers, a Reddit commercial really did pop up on the screen.

graphical user interface, text, application, email: Reddit's Superbowl ad aired for about five seconds during the big game on Sunday, February 7, 2021. © From Reddit Reddit’s Superbowl ad aired for about five seconds during the big game on Sunday, February 7, 2021.

The spot, which was just five seconds, opened as if it were a car commercial, but then quickly then flashed to Reddit’s orange and white logo, which was followed by a message. “If you’re reading this, it means our bets paid off,” the message read. “One thing we learned from our communities last week is that underdogs can accomplish just about anything when we come together around a common area.” The spot comes after a Reddit army — from the WallStreetBets page — took on Wall Street pros by inflating the share price of GameStop. The mass buying spree led to huge gains for some in the Reddit crowd who got in early. Hedge funds, meanwhile, lost billions of dollars on their short positions. “Who knows, maybe you’ll be the reason finance textbooks have to add a chapter on ‘tendies,'” the Reddit ad read. “Powerful things happen when people rally around something they really care about. And there’s a place for that. It’s called Reddit.” Reddit said it spent the “entire marketing budget” on the ad, which the company’s Chief Marketing Officer Roxy Young said “was not part of our marketing plan.”

“But we were so inspired by the power of our communities in recent weeks that we rallied to pull it together in just a few short days in collaboration with our agency partners at R/GA,” she told CNN Business in an email statement. “I am really proud of what we were able to achieve with just five seconds and think it beautifully captures the heart of Reddit in our unique and brilliantly absurd tone.” The ad aired in nine of the top 10 US metro markets, Young said, including New York, LA, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Boston and Washington, DC. Nick Note: these assholes are going to make us a shit pot of money. They are bringing in the suckers in mass. New blood… i love it. Soon we will harpoon this whale and eat his flesh. Their Super Bowl spot gives new meaning to flash in the pan.

Posted on

Shares reach record high, oil tops $60 a barrel

LONDON (Reuters) – World shares hit a record high on Monday and oil surpassed $60 a barrel for the first time in a year, on hopes that a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 aid package will be passed by U.S. lawmakers as soon as this month. Even news that South Africa had halted the rollout of AstraZeneca’s vaccine after a study showed it gave only limited protection against the country’s more contagious variant of the virus wasn’t going to put equity markets off. MSCI’s 50-country index of world stocks hit its ninth record high of 2021 overnight as Tokyo’s Nikkei jumped on talk of Japan relaxing emergency restrictions [.T] and as China’s markets got busy before the start of the lunar new year. [.SS] Europe then made a strong start as higher oil prices and inflation expectations lifted basic resource and banking shares, and France’s Veolia launched a hostile 11.3 billion-euro takeover bid for waste and water rival Suez.

“A generalised risk-on tone is pushing stocks higher,” UniCredit’s analysts said in a note.

Bond markets were focused on how far inflation might rise if the current mix of stimulus, rising oil and food prices and expectations for a reopening economies continue to hold. Ten-year U.S. Treasury yields, which are one of the main drivers of global borrowing costs, climbed to 1.2%, their highest since the peak of coronavirus uncertainty last March. Break-even rates, which are designed to account for inflation, traded as high as 2.21%, their highest since 2014. “It will be hard not to see inflation in something when we get what is likely to be a short-term stimulus boost,” Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid said, referring to planned U.S. stimulus. “Whether that will be in goods, wages or asset prices or all three remains to be seen, but it seems inevitable there will be an impact.” Brent crude touched an intraday high of $60.06 a barrel, the highest since January last year. Saudi Arabia’s pledge of extra supply cuts in February and March on the back of reductions by other OPEC members its allies, including Russia, is helping to balance global markets and support prices. In a sign that supplies are tightening, the six-month Brent spread hit its highest in more than year, $2.45. OCBC’s economist Howie Lee said the Saudis had sent another “very bullish signal” last week by keeping its Asian prices unchanged. “I don’t think anybody dares to short the market when Saudi is like this,” he said. Asia’s overnight rally had seen Japan’s Nikkei close up 2%, Chinese blue-chip shares advance 1.3% and Australian shares finish 0.6% higher. Wall Street futures were also pointing higher after the Nasdaq and S&P 500 both climbed to record highs on Friday as weak monthly U.S. jobs data supported expectations of stimulus and after some strong corporate earning.

U.S. President Joe Biden and his Democratic allies in Congress forged ahead with their stimulus plan on Friday as lawmakers approved a budget outline that will allow them to muscle through in the coming weeks without Republican support.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yallen predicted the United States would reach full employment next year if Congress can pass its support package. “That’s a big call, given full employment is 4.1%, but one that will sit well with the market at a time when the vaccination program is being rolled out efficiently in a number of countries,” said Chris Weston, Melbourne-based chief strategist at Pepperstone. Expectations of a U.S. economic recovery have not boosted the dollar, though, “because this shift in prospects is seen by the market as part of a global recovery,” Westpac economists wrote in a note. “Investors therefore favour risk taking, and so value the safety of the U.S. dollar less.” Indeed, the dollar came off a four-month high against the Japanese yen to be last at 105.50. The euro was weaker at $1.2027 after rising 0.7% on Friday to a one-week high. The risk-sensitive Australian dollar eased from a one-week high to $0.7675 while South Africa’s rand fell nearly 0.5% after its vaccine troubles. Nick Note: its off to the races. Ride the wave. Always remember the bigger the wave the bigger the crash. But for now first thing first!

Posted on

Nasdaq, S&P close on record highs as House passes budget bill

  • US stocks gained on Friday, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 closing at record highs.
  • The gain was driven by continued progress on President Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus package.
  • A weaker than expected January jobs report could boost chances of Biden’s stimulus deal getting passed.

US stocks gained on Friday as a weaker than expected jobs report set the stage for a swift passage of President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus proposal. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 indexes closed at record highs. The US Senate approved a budget measure early Friday morning to enable the passage of a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill without Republican support. The approval, for which Vice President Kamala Harris cast the tiebreaking vote, came hours before the January jobs report missed analyst estimates. The US added just 49,000 jobs in January, well below the estimate for 105,000 new jobs. But the unemployment rate continued to decline, falling to 6.3% from 6.7%. Also supporting stocks on Friday was Johnson & Johnson’s submission of its single-dose COVID-19 vaccine data to the Food Drug Administration for emergency use authorization. The FDA could approve the vaccine in a matter of weeks, and Johnson & Johnson said it would supply the US with 100 million doses by the summer. GameStop and AMC Entertainment had small bounces on Friday after Robinhood removed all buying restrictions on the volatile stocks that were involved a short squeeze last week. Shares of Pinterest surged as much as 11% on Friday after the company reported earnings that beat analyst expectations. The social-media platform said it added 100 million users in 2020.    The strong demand for Peloton bikes has led to extensive wait times for new customers, and the stock fell 7% after the company said it would invest $100 million to help shrink long wait times to more acceptable levels. The former baseball superstar Alex Rodriguez is betting that investor demand for special-purpose acquisition company initial public offerings will remain elevated in the 2021. Rodriguez filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to form the Slam Corp. SPAC, which is seeking up to $575 million to search for a deal. Rodriguez will serve as the CEO.  Oil prices rose. West Texas Intermediate crude jumped as much as 1.32% to $56.98 per barrel. Brent crude, oil’s international benchmark, gained 1.04%, going up to $59.44 per barrel at intraday highs. Nick Note: The stars are aligning for this mindless rally to continue.

Posted on

Habitual use of vitamin D supplements and risk of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection

After adjustment for covariates, the habitual use of vitamin D supplements was significantly associated with a 34% lower risk of COVID-19 infection (OR, 0.66; 95% CI, 0.45–0.97; P = 0.034). Circulating vitamin D levels at baseline or genetically predicted vitamin D levels were not associated with the risk of COVID-19 infection. The association between the use of vitamin D supplements and the risk of COVID-19 infection did not vary according to the different levels of circulating or genetically predicted vitamin D (P-interactions = 0.75 and 0.74, respectively). Nick Note: Take the damn Vitamin. I have seen recommendations  of 10,000 IU per day. WITH NO REPORTS OF TOXICITY

READ THE STUDY FOR YOURSELF:

Vitamin D study UK

Posted on

Mutated virus may reinfect people already stricken once with covid-19, sparking debate and concerns

A trial of an experimental coronavirus vaccine detected the most sobering signal yet that people who have recovered from infections are not completely protected against a variant that originated in South Africa and is spreading rapidly, preliminary data presented this week suggests. The finding, though far from conclusive, has potential implications for how the pandemic will be brought under control, underscoring the critical role of vaccination, including for people who have already recovered from infections. Reaching herd immunity — the threshold when enough people achieve protection and the virus can’t seed new outbreaks — will depend on a mass vaccination campaign that has been constrained by limited supply. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, noted that it appears a vaccine is better than natural infection in protecting people, calling it “a big, strong plug to get vaccinated” and a reality check for people who may have assumed that because they have already been infected, they are immune.

Some experts fear vaccines may be less effective against strains of the coronavirus that were first found in the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil.

In the placebo group of the trial for Novavax’s vaccine, people with prior coronavirus infections appeared just as likely to get sick as people without them, meaning they weren’t fully protected against the B.1.351 variant that has swiftly become dominant in South Africa. The variant has been detected only a handful of times in the United States, including a case reported Friday in Virginia, which became the third state to identify the presence of the virus variant.The preliminary finding from the South African vaccine trial, based on a data set with limitations, stirred debate and concern among researchers as results first hinted at in a news release last week were revealed more broadly this week.

“The data really are quite suggestive: The level of immunity that you get from natural infection — either the degree of immunity, the intensity of the immunity or the breadth of immunity — is obviously not enough to protect against infection with the mutant,” Fauci said.

Even if they don’t agree on the scope of the threat, scientists said reinfection with new variants is clearly a risk that needs to be explored more. There is no evidence that second cases are more severe or deadly, and a world in which people may have imperfect protection against new versions of the virus is not necessarily a world in which the pandemic never ends.“I worry especially that some of these premature sweeping conclusions being made could rob people of hope,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Georgetown University’s Center for Global Health Science and Security. “I worry the message they may receive is that we’re never going to be rid of this. When in fact that’s not what the data suggests.”  She and others emphasized the apparent lack of severe health repercussions from reinfection — and the lack of evidence that reinfection is common. When Maryland biotechnology company Novavax first disclosed results from two international vaccine trials last week, the company noted in its news release that some people in the trial with earlier infections had become reinfected, probably with the variant B.1.351, which had become dominant during the trial.On Tuesday, details of the Novavax trial were presented at the New York Academy of Sciences.  About 30 percent of the people in the South African trial had antibodies in their blood at the start of the trial showing they had recovered from an earlier infection. But that previous exposure didn’t necessarily appear to afford protection. Among those who got saltwater shots, the people with a prior infection got sick at the same rate as study participants who had not been previously infected — a surprise because they would have been expected to have some immunity. Nearly 4 percent of people who had a previous infection were reinfected, an almost identical rate to those with no history of infection.

“It’s awful strong data,” said Larry Corey, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle who is co-leading the federal clinical trial network testing coronavirus vaccines in the United States. “Basically, it’s saying vaccination actually needs to be better than natural immunity. But vaccination is better than natural immunity.

The study found that two shots of the experimental vaccine did provide protection against the variant. The reinfection result was incidental to the main objective of the study, which was to determine the vaccine’s efficacy and safety. It was not designed to test the likelihood of reinfection, and others argued that it can’t be used to draw firm conclusions and cautioned against assuming that the previous infection provided no protection.  The study backs up recent laboratory data from South African researchers analyzing blood plasma from recovered patients. Nearly half of the plasma samples had no detectable ability to block the variant from infecting cells in a laboratory dish. In a separate study, scientists at Rockefeller University in New York took blood plasma from people who had been vaccinated and found that vaccine-generated antibodies were largely able to block mutations found on the B.1.351 variant.Novavax did not provide a breakdown of mild, moderate and severe cases, but severe cases of covid-19 were rare in the trial, suggesting that reinfection is unlikely to send people to the hospital.  “It is not surprising to see reinfection in individuals who are convalescent. And it would not be surprising to see infection in people who are vaccinated, especially a few months out from vaccine,” said Michel Nussenzweig, head of the Laboratory of Molecular Immunology at Rockefeller University. “The key is not whether people get reinfected, it’s whether they get sick enough to be hospitalized.” “Everyone’s still trying to digest this and asking, is this really what’s happening?

Because the implications are pretty huge,” said Chris Murray, who leads the modeling team at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. “If the data holds true, it means we will need to walk the public back on the idea of how close we are to the finish line for ending this pandemic.”

Others are less sure. Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at Harvard University, said he couldn’t draw clear conclusions from the data because it remains limited and preliminary. “The pace has been dizzying, and several times today, I have learned new things that significantly change my view of those data,” Lipsitch said.Projections created by data scientist Youyang Gu — whose pandemic models have been cited by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — suggest that about 65 percent of America’s population will reach immunity by June 1. But built into that 65 percent is roughly 20 percent having immunity from past infections only. Scientists are unsure how the potential for reinfection might influence their projections. They are eager to see if other vaccine trial data in coming weeks will corroborate the trend from the Novavax trial.

Posted on

U.S. President Biden speaks about the economy and need to pass coronavirus aid legislation at the White House in Washington

U.S. President Joe Biden delivers remarks on the state of the U.S. economy and the need to pass coronavirus disease (COVID-19) aid legislation during a speech in the State Dining Room at the White House in Washington, U.S., February 5, 2021. Nick Note: Everyday we get closer to a huge happy check bill. Why work? Pay rent? or your bills.  Get paid to fuck, get high and trade Robin Hood… Its called millennial heaven! The only problem with this kind of heaven. It soons turns to hell. When your work becomes your play your play becomes your work and its not fun any more… And something always comes along to screw it up.